Sugamone is the ship name I think haha (who doesn’t love a sharing-one-umbrella-in-the-rain-trope)

Another sweet scene from Okaeri Mone (I love this sweet and healthy ship sm) <3

Mone is from Kesennuma, which was one of the main areas devastated by the 2011 tsunami in Japan. She and her family, friends, and hometown are all still picking up the pieces and trying to rebuild, years after the event. Suganami wants to be there for her and tries to see past the bright, happy demeanor she usually has on, to the pain she’s been carrying around this whole time.

The show has a way of taking a heavy, serious topic (the great earthquake+ tsunami+ nuclear disaster+ loss) and allowing us to experience it via a relatable coming of age story that focuses on the people and relationships rather than the disaster itself. The show is already about 2/3 of the way through, and I’m already feeling bummed about it ending soon :( But this definitely was the gateway drug for me into the world of asadora’s and I’m excited to check more of them out after this one

Sugamone [Okaeri Mone]

I think I’d like to try featuring more Asian shows/movies/characters haha. Is there such a thing as western media exhaustion? I feel like a lot of shows (not all, but a lot) have become so similar and predictable & uninspiring that I’ve found myself enjoying a lot more content coming from Japan, Thailand, South Korea, Taiwan, etc. And we grew up on mostly American shows & movies here so I’ve actually seen a lot more of that than stuff from my own corner of the world, which is a real shame.

Anyway, rambling aside. Okaeri Mone is one of the shows I’ve loved watching recently, even more so because of this adorable ship (this is them posing for a photo before their first “date” because her mom wants to see what he looks like and her sister had to go check him out for her haha) (I don’t know if they’ve got a ship name yet haha or can anyone help me tag this in Kanji?) and because of the story’s relevance to climate change & disaster prevention. Okaeri Mone is a Japanese “asadora”, which is a short format drama series that they show with the morning news. Each episode is only 15 minutes long and there are 100+ episodes per asadora season. And I like that they usually feature heroines or Japanese women in history (something western media will need to catch up to—there have been over a hundred asadoras and only a handful have been male leads!) and their journey as they follow their dreams.

Anyway I’ll be peppering in a lot more of these mini highlights, so I hope you find some new movies/shows to try—trust me, subtitles are not as big a hurdle as you might think! There’s a whole world of stories out there, so let’s add more of them to our repertoire. Happy watching

余命10年

Yomei 10 Nen

Her life expectancy is 10 years